An Empirical Model of Employed Search, Unemployed Search, and Nonsearch

The 1969-1971 National Longitudinal Surveys data on young men were used to study the employed worker's choice among employed search, unemployed search, and not searching for a new job. We assume that an unobserved variable, search intensity, governs this choice such that unemployed search involves a greater intensity than employed search, which, of course, is associated with greater intensity than nonsearch. The principal results are that current wages, seniority, collective bargaining coverage, employment outside construction, and employment by government are each, ceteris paribus, negatively associated with search intensity. Further, each of these variables lowers the probability of not searching and raises the probabilities of employed and unemployed job search.